Chapter 736 --736

Chapter 736: Chapter-736

She threw her hands up, gesturing wildly to the blackened, smoking clay pot beside her feet.

"Do you have any idea what you have done?!" Heena raged, stepping toward the threshold as Old Zhao instinctively flinched back. "Thanks to your idiocy, the rare alchemical batch you just ruined in that pot is worth more than eighty of your miserable chickens! And you are standing in my doorway talking to me about one?!"

Old Zhao’s rough face went entirely pale, her lips parting without a sound as the astronomical math hit her ears.

Heena didn’t let up for a single second, pressing her advantage with ruthless theatricality. "Because of you people, my work is ruined, my back room is ruined, and my entire house is practically uninhabitable! Do you have any idea how many weeks it is going to take to scrub this scorched stench out of the wooden beams?! Do you know how much time, labor, and rare stock was just reduced to ash on that brazier?! I have been carefully drying, curing, and preparing those exact ingredients for eight whole months, and thanks to your barking mutt, it was all destroyed in the blink of an eye!"

Up near the dusty ceiling beams, the golden lion cub blinked its glowing blue eyes, tilting its head in sheer confusion.

"Uh... Host?" the System whispered through their mental link. "Eight months? You literally just transmigrated into this body two days ago, and you pulled those rotten roots out of a trash pile five minutes ago—"

"Just shut up, you fucking monster!" Heena snapped back inside her mind, the telepathic roar so sharp it practically made the AI’s digital fur stand on end.

The System instantly clamped both paws over its mouth and zipped its lips shut, shrinking back into the shadows of the rafters. It knew its Host’s habits all too well by now; Heena was usually icy, composed, and wickedly sarcastic. Whenever she dropped the poise and started swearing that viciously in her head, it meant her nerves were stretched to the absolute breaking point and she was genuinely, furiously stressed out.

Down on the shop floor, Heena’s chest heaved—partly for dramatic effect, and partly because her bound ribs were throbbing like hellfire from all the shouting and smoke inhalation. She locked her dark, watering eyes onto Old Zhao, waiting to see if the woman dared to push the issue of the dog any further.

Outside on the cobblestones, the massive yellow hound was still sneezing violently, rubbing its raw, burning snout into the mud and whimpering pitifully. The scorching cloud of roasted chili seeds and sulfur roots had completely obliterated its sense of smell. Even if Heena dug up the chicken bones and waved them right in front of the dog’s face, the poor beast wouldn’t be able to smell a thing for a week.

With the tracker rendered completely useless, there was zero proof. And in the face of Heena’s towering fury and her threat to drag the yamen bailiffs into the street, not a single person dared to breathe a word about searching the back room.

An awkward, suffocating silence fell over the doorway.

The stout vegetable woman exchanged a panicked glance with the veiled man beside her. Slowly, ever so quietly, the nosy neighbors began shuffling their feet backward, attempting to melt back into the bustling morning street and slip away before the bill for the "ruined alchemical batch" landed on their heads. Even Old Zhao, her face pale and glistening with cold sweat, took a hesitant step back, tugging softly on her ruined hound’s leash to beat a hasty retreat.

Heena’s dark eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits.

She had started this performance simply to save her own skin, but looking at their guilty, terrified faces, her ruthless opportunist instincts took over. She was broke. And these bastards had just tried to break into her house to lynch her.

Why settle for surviving when she could profit?

Heena took two heavy steps forward and slammed the wooden stirring stick against the door frame with a deafening crack that made the entire group jump out of their skins.

"Stop right there!" Heena shouted, her voice cutting through the morning air like a whip. "If a single one of you dares to run away, I will make sure you regret it for the rest of your lives! I remember every face standing on my porch!"

The retreating neighbors froze mid-step, their backs rigid as stone.

Heena stood framed in the swirling, acrid smoke of her doorway, looking less like a starving castaway and more like a ruthless debt collector from hell. She extended a pale, dirt-stained hand, palm up, and glared directly at Old Zhao and the cowering crowd.

"You broke into my shop and destroyed my livelihood, and you think you can just slink away?!" Heena demanded coldly. "Pay me my money. Eight hundred copper coins, right here, right now! If I don’t see every last copper in my palm within the next breath, nobody leaves—we can all march straight down to the yamen and let the magistrate decide who pays!"

The word yamen hung in the smoky morning air like an executioner’s blade.

Every commoner in the east market knew the brutal reality of the magistrate’s court. If the bailiffs got involved in a property dispute between a noble—even a disgraced one—and a pack of street vendors, the commoners would be dragged in chains, given twenty heavy strikes with a wooden paddle just on principle, and squeezed dry of every last coin they owned in "court fees."

Compared to the yamen, eight hundred copper coins was a mercy.

"Eight... eight hundred?!" Old Zhao stammered, her burly frame trembling with a mix of terror and suffocating rage. "Where am I supposed to get eight hundred coppers on the spot?! I just came out to look for my bird!" 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

"That sounds like a conversation you can have with the magistrate’s torturers," Heena replied smoothly, not lowering her outstretched hand an inch. She tapped the wooden stick against the doorframe with a slow, ominous rhythm. "One breath is almost up."

realizing she was about to be ruined, Old Zhao whipped around, her bloodshot eyes locking viciously onto the stout vegetable woman and the middle-aged man who had thrown her under the bus seconds ago.

"You bastards aren’t getting out of this!" Old Zhao roared, grabbing the stout woman by the sleeve of her jacket. "You all pushed in right behind me! Your feet crossed her threshold too! You heard the lady—she remembers every single one of your faces! If I go down to the yamen, I am dragging all six of you down to hell with me!"

"Let go of me, you crazy old bat!" the woman shrieked, trying to pry Zhao’s thick fingers off her arm. "It was your stupid mutt!"

"Enough!" Heena barked, cutting through their frantic squabbling before a fistfight could break out on her porch. Her ribs were throbbing violently, and the acrid chili smoke rolling out the door behind her was making her lightheaded; she needed this finished before her knees gave out.

She pointed the wooden stick squarely at Old Zhao’s nose. "Five hundred coppers from you for leading the beast onto my porch and breaking open my door." She then swung the stick in a sharp arc across the six cowering neighbors. "And fifty coppers from each of you for unlawful trespassing. Pay up right now, and I will consider this matter settled. Refuse, and I start screaming for the morning patrol."